Get creative on street repairs

When the subject of discussion is street repairs in the City of Cape Girardeau, most in the community would agree: It's time for our mayor, city council members and city management to be creative and think outside the box to address this issue.

Even though the city has implemented a revised pay plan to attract and retain quality employees, the city remains understaffed in many departments, especially in public works.

With this limited workforce, the city currently does not have the workers required to aggressively repair our streets.

If there is any hope of making significant progress in completing needed street repairs, our city leaders must seek assistance from other resources to complete the repairs.

Resources such as:

• Hiring outside contractors to replace damaged sections of streets.
• Employing seasonal workers, at a competitive wage, and assign them exclusively to the task of repairing streets.
• Temporarily suspending the self-imposed policy of not using casino tax revenue to fund street repairs. Most in the community would be willing to forego future "warm and fuzzy" casino funded projects if these tax dollars were redirected to repairing city streets.

It's common knowledge: the city is behind on street repairs.

Also, it could take several years before the city will be fully staffed to be able to aggressively complete the needed repairs.

Repairing the streets cannot wait several years. It's time for our city leaders to be creative and think outside the box to fix our streets!

GARY HILL, Cape Girardeau