The Detroit and Flint bankruptcies are in the public consciousness, but in both cases the cities emerged from their crisis.  But what happens if the money really runs out?  What if a community cannot escape fiscal challenges.  All over the country there are communities, in spite of economic growth that appears to be occurring, that are at risk.  These communities are primarily rural, because the economic growth in the US appears to be primarily an urban phenomenon.  In fact, as economist Richard Florida calls “winner-take-all” urbanism.  The concept separates top tier communities -the New York’s, San Francisco’s and Chicago’s of the world from everyone else.  These large, thriving urban centers attract talent from all over their world, fueling competition for wages that cannot be challenges in smaller communities.  With US influence declining around the world, and more competition from China nd Russia, where are even more challenges for this talent. It makes the middle class smaller, creating wealthy people at the top and a lot more at the bottom.  Rural America is losing population, mostly younger people seeking better opportunities in urban areas.

Local officials have a stewardship responsibility to manage their assets.  There are no statues to officials who hold taxes down or cut services.  There are no awards for failing to plan, with reserve funds, for that day when the economy falters and revenues are short.  But what if the community cannot keep up?  Then what happens to those people?

Iowa is one of these rural states.  Iowa has 25,000 bridges and 114, 000 miles of roads they are trying to maintain.  The State does not things they can maintain all the roads, so what are they proposing?  How about abandoning plans to maintain certain roads?  The state is proposing just that action but it has challenges.  Roads never go away.  Once there is a road, people learn to rely on it. Farmers use them; taxes get paid for roads – is it fair that your road goes away?  Probably not, but this does not seem to be a sustainable approach either.  If revenues further deteriorate, do more roads go away?

Clearly there is a problem here – and maybe this confirms Dr. Florida’s thesis.

The last week of January for the past 10 years has been my opportunity to revisit WW2 bombers in either Fort Lauderdale or Boca Raton presented by the Collings Foundation.  The plane I looked forward to the most was the B17, a plane my Dad flew 25 missions on during WW2.  The plane was named the 909.  I signed up and did a 1 hour flight about 15 years ago.  It was truly a great experience and gave me some idea of my Dad’s experience (minus the flak and bullets of course – thankfully!).  Several years ago, a number of my students went when they flew into the Boca airport and enjoyed this piece of history.  So I was curious whether the Collings Foundation would fly in this year given that we lost the 909 last October when it crashed with 13 aboard on one of those flights like I took.  Very sad – sadder that 6 of the 13 died and the others were in pretty bad shape.  We lost people and a huge piece of history as the B17 was a critical component of the US willing WW2.  Worse, it was only one of a very few that still can fly.  The good news, the Collings Foundation is still flying their other planes.

The sad news, they did not come to southeast Florida this year, but it would have been a little weird going and not seeing the 909. THe photos below are the 2018 visit – I went on my birthday – last couple are it flying away – I got to help oil the propellor to start it up.  909 – you are missed