Forget the center; focus on roads

“Roads!” Barstow citizens complained. “We need our roads paved!”

The City of Barstow has responded — by paying an architect $50,000 to put together a renovation plan for the mostly abandoned (and completely unneeded) Al Vigil Center to include such features as classrooms and a computer lab.

Granted, the city has released a list of streets it plans to repair this year (and we’ll believe it when it actually happens), but it’s not nearly enough. Many of Barstow’s streets look positively post-apocalyptic. Several streets that look as though they’re being held together solely by gravity aren’t even on the list.

We can partly predict the city’s defense. The funds for the Al Vigil renovation would come from a state parks grant, not city funds. It’s not like those funds could be used to pave streets anyway.

First of all, some folks seem to be operating under some bizarre idea that if the city pays for something with grant money, that’s the same as getting something for free. That’s just not true. The money is still coming from taxpayers — just from a wider pool than Barstow. That everybody in the state would be helping pay for the City of Barstow to install a computer lab doesn’t make it ethical or acceptable.

Second, the grant would only pay for the cost of the renovation, leaving the City of Barstow to have to pay for the management and operation of the center should it reopen. Where is this money going to come from, exactly?

This is the essentially the same thing that happened with the city’s compressed and liquefied natural gas facility. It was paid for with grant money from various sources, and the city believed it would make money from customers who use this type of fuel for their vehicles. That didn’t happen. Now the facility is costing Barstow residents money as the city begs businesses (like Burrtec) to convert their trucks to these fuel systems in hopes the station will someday make a profit.

The city asked residents what they wanted for the center and no doubt got a wish list. But they failed to ask residents about any sort of trade off. If city staff asked residents to choose between reopening the center or repaving additional city streets, surely anybody who actually interacts with the community knows what the answer is going to be.

Forget the center. We are already overcommitted in our parks department. The city’s priority list must be dominated by repairs to Barstow’s crumbling infrastructure. Fix the streets.