City of Los Angeles Proposes Sales Tax Hike to Fix Sidewalks

Two policy analysts with the city of Los Angeles have
recommended elected officials put a half-cent sales tax hike on the
November 2015 ballot to pay for the repair of LA’s worst sidewalks
and streets. They say the tax hike would generate

$4.5 billion over the next 15 years, with $640 million for broken
sidewalks. Reason TV took a look at LA’s crumbling sidewalks in
LA’s New Crack Epidemic: Sidewalks. Here is the original
post:

Ever walk down a Los Angeles city sidewalk? It may feel like
climbing the Himalayas.

Tree roots have uplifted many city sidewalks across L.A.,
turning a quick walk around the neighborhood into a treacherous
experience. According to  The
Los Angeles Times, the city receives about 2,500
claims a year from people who hurt themselves on these cracks.

“People get hurt and people can die from falling down on and
hitting their head on the sidewalk,” says Los Angeles resident
Peter Griswold.

What’s the city’s solution to this problem? A three-year, $10
million survey of all of the city’s sidewalks.

Residents like Griswold say that price tag is too high. He has
come up with a plan of his own that involves photographs, GPS
devices, and – most importantly – volunteers. Griswold is confident
that his ragtag crew of sidewalk cartographers can find and report
trouble spots more quickly – and cheaply – than city workers.

“What Peter Griswold is trying to do with volunteers, the
advantage that has is that it’s decentralized,” says Adrian Moore,
vice president of research at Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that
publishes Reason TV.

Moore grants it may be hard to implement on a large scale but
you have to stack that up against the usual way city governments
fix local problems. Namely, writing a fat check to a contractor so
they don’t have to deal with it anymore. Hence, the $10
million.

Moore points out that these uplifted sidewalk cracks are
indicative of something bigger: bureaucracy run amok.

“One of the problems bureaucracies have, and LA in particular
has, is nobody who manages these departments actually invests the
management effort in saying lets be ruthless about prioritizing
what’s most important,” says Moore.

Written and produced by Paul Detrick.

Music by Lee
Maddeford.

Approximately 4:23 minutes.

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