The good news is that we have a remarkable levee system that has been built up for the last 50 years or so. We also had very good disaster planning from department heads (I think we learned a lesson from the ice storm). We also had a good response from the state and we will probably get quite a bit of reimbursement from FEMA (or the city will).
So what’s the lesson here? We learned that city prepared this 2nd round very well, which is great. It’s unfortunate they could not have done more about the first round.
But let’s make it clear, moving forward with climate change, we can probably expect more events like this in the future. We are certainly NOT out of the clear.
As for the potholes, it may be too late this year, but moving forward we need to build our roads better. I’m not sure if there needs to be engineering or material changes (probably both) but when you look at what other cities do like Minneapolis, we can build our roads better, it is possible, but it will cost more. That’s reality. This is why the city needs to get back to using the 2nd penny for it’s intended purpose, building infrastructure. The days of building extravagant play palaces need to end and we need to put that money into our roads. We can’t continue to squander that money like we have the past 17 years on entertaining the rich. We also need to end corporate welfare in the form of TIFs and tax reduction schemes. Our development community does just fine without tax breaks, they need to start contributing their fare share towards property taxes.