We have been seeing a major influx of non-english speaking immigrants coming into our schools causing a major overcrowding. With that comes the schools begging for tax increases for building new schools. With the economy being what it is, that is not going over so well. No one wants to be forced to pay anything more right now. So it is getting people pretty riled around here right now.
The biggest issue here is whether or not to remove barriers that block certain streets from becoming thoroughfares. No kidding, we have little crime or other problems. Th city is having layoffs, they have plenty of money but have gone from 400 new building permits a year to 100, so there's no work for the people to do.
Not a lot of crime here. The biggest problem is the roads. We have teeange deathes from driving to fast on narrow back roads. Just two weeks ago we had a well liked promising future senior from one of the local high schools wreak his car and died in it.
the meth is still bad here, they've done quite a bit to combat it, but those tweakers are very quick to find new ways to cook the crap. The crime has gotten quite a bit worse over the last 10 to 15 years too, we've had more murders this year than the last 3 years combined. Desperate times for some i suppose. Only live in a city with about 100k people, but that's proving to be too many people for the infrastructure. Lot of suburbs and things popping up and with all the stores and shops being on one half of the city it makes for very congested driving. I shouldn't have to wait for 2 stop light rotations in a town with 100k people.
The schools aren't doing very well either. Oklahoma really doesn't do much to make the life of a teacher easy. My wife has most of her classes half filled with some special needs kids. There's nothing wrong with that, but she told me that she does not know how to teach them effectively, it was not what she signed up for, nor what she studied for in school. If it wasn't for my job we'd move to Texas, probably San Antonio. I'm in the casino business and Texas hasn't come around yet :P (yeah, i know casinos are probably part of the problem, but they pay good and treat us right. Probably the best place to work in town)
Austin votes different than the rest of the state, it seems to cause turmoil. Austin is a liberal hot bed in an otherwise fanatically conservative state. That being said, it causes all sorts of issues.
One of the problems forth coming here in Calgary is the the airport is going to build a new runway. Now that may not be seen as a problem but when the city is planning on permantly close one of the access road to the airport is. Now there was a proposal for a tunnel from the north east side of the airport to conect to another road that runs into the airport, but that was shot down by the city council. What that means for the residents of the north east part of the city is that they will have to make a drive that is aproximatly 45 minutes to and hour further from their home to get to the airport.
Also the hotels and businesses that are close the that end of the airport where the road closure is going to be will loose untold ammounts of business.
This is a progresive and growing city, but the minds behind the city planning are lacking in the knowledge of traffic flow and how to un-clutter our major arteries. Traffic flow through this city has been growing and growing and the drive to work and backhas increased ten fold.
Little ol Winnemucca aint much of a city, but the big city folks over in California are trying to stuff a garbage dump down our throats. Talking about ninety tons a day by rail to a dry lake bed twenty miles from town. What if this 'global warming' actually happens and those basins fill with water, or just seepage to the water table?