Issue Position: Smart, Efficient Infrastructure

Issue Position

Let's build our communities in the way that makes the most sense by examining the full costs, return on investment, and sustainability of our growth patterns. Instead of solely looking to expand our cities outward with new, expensive infrastructure, we can invest in restoring and rebuilding the neighborhoods, downtowns, and main street communities we already have. When we fully utilize our existing infrastructure, we reduce government spending and help create the environment needed for businesses to compete, grow and prosper.

A community's horizontal, low density expansion often results in a geographic footprint that is increasingly expensive over time, even to the point of becoming economically unsustainable. Larger footprints require communities to invest more in virtually every category--from new water towers, sewer lines and sewage systems, to streetlights, sidewalks, snow plows, lawnmowers, garbage collection, and more. And these aren't one-time costs--they're ongoing expenses that require personnel and maintenance, year after year.

Ultimately, this leads to bigger government, higher property taxes, and unsustainable spending.

As one example, let's look at three cities: Fargo, North Dakota; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Boulder, Colorado. All of these cities have comparable populations, yet Fargo's geographic footprint (about 49 sq. miles) is nearly twice as large as either Ann Arbor or Boulder. This means that in Fargo, there are more roads to plow and patrol, more pipes to fix, and an overall larger infrastructure to maintain, for a similar population. Fargo now has over 2,000 lane miles of roads to plow after each snow storm. That's almost twice as long as the distance from Fargo to Frisco, Texas.

Simply put, one of the major determinants of cost for a city or community is linear feet. The more linear feet, the greater the cost of everything.

To attract and retain entrepreneurs, innovators, and 21st century jobs to our region, we need to provide smart power grids and high speed gigabit bandwidth in order for them to compete and grow. Just like railroads and highway systems enabled economic growth for North Dakota in our first 127 years, an upgraded infrastructure will enable new jobs, new solutions and new services across energy, agriculture, aviation, healthcare, education and more.

If we want small, efficient government, we need to have small, efficient footprints.

If we want to attract 21st century jobs, we need smart infrastructure.

Source