by Kevin Ford 

I think it is important to recognize that the salt shed has become an ecological disaster and that it was a fully preventable one. It has contaminated the water supply, hurt the health and business of nearby landowners and may have long term impact on their land values. We, the citizens of Woodstock, collectively allowed this to happen.

Now that the problem has become so bad that the state has mandated that we fix the salt barn we are starting to hear the argument that we should just fix that and ignore the other facilities in the complex that are in a similar state. I cannot warn against that enough for many of the same reasons why it was harmful to ignore the problems with the salt shed in the first place. For example, if we can’t properly maintain and wash the salt off our vehicles what is the long term cost of replacing those vehicles on a more frequent schedule?

I understand why some people may be worried that groups may use this as an excuse to attack the education budget. However, from watching them for quite some time, they will do so anyway. They won’t need this excuse and their movement on the education budget will be the same either way. At the end of the day not voting to maintain or replace things of this nature because of apathy and fear of a minority interest is what caused the salt contamination in the first place.

We need to learn from that lesson; we should take a longer term outlook in our cost/benefit analysis. Not just in terms of finances but in terms of potential ecological harm, harm to land values, harm to the people who work in the facilities and harm to the people who depend on them. When overfed government can be dangerous but when starved the harm of neglected infrastructure can be just as great.

At the end of the day we don’t have to be held hostage by a minority interest; refusing to take action that we know needs to be done and will cost us more down the line. All we have to do to stop this cycle of fear is to come out to vote, to tell your friends to do so and keep coming. Let’s not wait until the next disaster strikes us, ecological or otherwise, because we would not take proactive action to correct the known problems that our aging town infrastructure are causing us.

Thanks,

Kevin

This post represents my personal opinions and in no way should be considered an official act of the BOE or that I am speaking on behalf of the BOE in any way.