Chris Baker

Minot

We always seem to be wring our hands trying to figure out how to pay for road maintenance. May I suggest that, since all retail, local and internet, arrives at destination via roads, their maintenance should be funded by sales taxes. Good roads are more important to economic development than any slush fund. A community that uses logic and common sense about taxes and funding is more likely to gain permanent growth than is one that bribes businesses to come. When the bribes end the (monkey) businesses leave. Just look around town at the really nice, but now under-utilized, or vacant, buildings past recipients of “economic development funds” built (and I suspect, wrote off on their taxes!)