The good life

(1/2022) The job of delivering magic at Christmas has been hard for a couple of years, but somehow it came through and we have a lot to look forward to despite challenges. When things around us are shaky, here in Frederick County and our town of Woodsboro, we have great support for our basic needs of life. We owe a lot to our public infrastructure. We have great public spaces. Woodsboro Park and Carroll Creek Linear Park are jewels. Our public safety networks for life sustaining utilities of power, wastewater and clean drinking water are maintained by professionals. Shareholders may come and go, but a country’s people are here forever. Government has to invest in our future.

Woodsboro Park has places for any imaginable community activity; playgrounds, walkways, pavilions for groups, a bandstand for music. Our park offers something for everyone in our diverse community. Having a park isn’t just about having a park, it’s about community. Government spending isn’t just about allocations. It’s about living together in our country, our shared community. Woodsboro is a town on top of things with public utilities such as our own water treatment plant. Community planning brings us this good life.

In 2006 my husband and I did a custom display project for the National Association of Sewer Service Companies, NASSCO, a trade association with the mission to increase awareness of aging underground infrastructure everywhere in the USA. We created a life size model of an underground sewer pipe complete with trompe l'oeil cracks, with a variety of debris and tree roots growing through cracks. It was 6 feet high, you could walk through it and get an idea of what sort of damage happens to our hidden sewer system—our national infrastructure. We learned a lot about how the sanitation system was crumbling. You can’t see it, why does it matter? Because it is the backbone of public health safety.

In the 1800s, diseases from bacteria were still some of the biggest killers of humans, especially in cities with open, shared water sources, such as a public pump for drinking water. In 1854 doctor John Snow discovered that bacteria caused a cholera outbreak in London spread by use of a hand pump for drinking water. The handle of that pump was removed and within a few days the cases of cholera all but disappeared. Dr. Snow went on to develop and inspire future safe guards for drinking water. The modern utility for public water was born and within a short time the mortality rate dropped, at least in western countries like ours. Our original wastewater system, which lasts to this day, is over 100 years old, according to our friends at NASSCO, who targeted the 2020s as the best case scenario for a widespread infrastructure failure.

Our Congress has just passed, and President Biden signed into law, H.R.3684 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to address this along with many other issues that affect every American, right down to the water that comes to our homes.

The building of our national infrastructure was a great investment in our good life—saving hundreds of thousands of American lives over decades. Debating how and where to engineer, build, and maintain such public works is worthwhile, it takes study, consensus, and compromise. With infrastructure providing basic health safety, we can move on to other community projects such as parks. All of these projects are accomplished by consensus and group effort, by our pooled resources—taxes and fees—and organized by elected officials—our government. Thriving business areas and public spaces are simply better when there is a strong government management to back up economic dreams.

Government For the People needs to be the right size to get the job done For the People. The slogan "small government" is a meaningless statement that, to believe it, requires us to question nothing. Our government should fit our needs, not be bloated and out of balance. As citizens, our job is to elect people who will work together for the common good, a government that is the right size for the jobs we all need done.

Our Constitutional government was created and meant to be effective today if we send elected representatives to solve problems through a system that works for most people. The history of our town, same as towns everywhere, is full of tales of successes and failures. Sometimes, people plan a project that screws up, money spent on a project that fails. Government has time to learn from mistakes, to make things better in the long run. We give these big projects to our elected representatives because government can wait for a return on investment. Private business must rush profits to shareholders.

In Woodsboro we have had responsible town administrations ensuring that our water treatment plant is up to the need of a growing town. About the time our family moved here in 2002, regulations for water safety were updated. When then Burgess Trimmer and the town council planned for a new water treatment plant, the bar was set high, the best facility to handle our need as far into the future as possible. You can’t have a resource available to all if you just keep your own money in your pocket. A shared utility is paid by government funds, whether taxes or fees, like your water bill.

The President has just announced the Biden-Harris Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan, a plan to "deliver clean drinking water, replace lead pipes, and remediate lead paint" throughout the entire country. This has been needed for decades, and will go far to support public health, with an added future benefit of bringing down medical costs of toxins in drinking water. We need government administration to invest in projects on this scale. It is our responsibility as citizens to elect people—our friends and neighbors—to reach consensus on these projects.

Meanwhile, we also have some really great parks.