Minnesotan forgets what winter’s really like

Editor’s note: The Frontiersman hopes to have a rotating column once a week from each of the Valley’s four mayors. Mayor Rupright agreed to kick it off.

The local Valley eatery was busy at lunch. As usual the talk swirled around the Obama health care initiative.

A nice waitress came by and filled my water glass and handed me a menu. Having just left the summer session of the Conference of Mayors my mind wandered to other topics that had come up. The state Department of Transportation folks talked about the Waxman-Markey Energy and Security Act, Congressman Oberstar’s Surface Transportation Act and a plan called “Moving Cooler” brought to us compliments of Cambridge Systematics. Rep. Oberstar of Minnesota, (Minnesota brought us funny man Al Franken), is the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He wants to move $500 billion into what he describes as a “bold new vision” in American transportation, as stated in his Blueprint for Reform publication released in June. These bundle of writings all have one common theme: stop driving and move.

They break down in the following manner: Reduce carbon emissions by 83 percent, impose a fuel tax around $5 a gallon, charge driving by the mile, your insurance companies also will adjust your rates by the mile, modify land use in order to facilitate movement to urban areas and away from the rural so that you may walk, bicycle or ride a new commuter train, limit vehicle travel and reduce speeds when and if you travel.

The new taxes collected do not necessarily go back into traditional upgrades of infrastructure as we know it.

This was quite a plateful to ponder. I mused what it would be like to live much closer to my neighbors, like in a complex, what it would be like to bicycle to work in January here in Wasilla, be forced to move into a large urban area or just go to the store for the milk, a movie or, better still, pay huge taxes for the privilege of owing a minibike because of carbon fuel.

I thought, “What next? A tennis shoe rubber tax?”

I pondered the future and the immeasurable changes in lifestyle and none of it sounded very palatable. The waitress returned and said, “What’a ya have?” I told her, “I’ll have the soylent green special with Kool-Aid, lot’s of uncle sugar and hold the strychnine.” As she left smiling with my order I was left with my thoughts about long walks, bicycling in the winter, crowded commuter trains, living so that I can hear the kids screaming in the next apartment. I thought, perhaps, this is the time to go back to my little grass shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii. At least there it’s warmer and less crowded.

Verne Rupright is the mayor of Wasilla.