Infrastructure

From pipes to parks, from buildings to roads, our infrastructure is failing because it’s been overlooked over the course of decades.

Lack of investment in our roads is catching up with us.

16.8 miles of roads were replaced in 2022, in a city with 450 miles of maintained roads. At this pace, it will take us over 26 years to get to all of the streets in our city. This isn’t good enough.  

And snow plowing is a continuing problem, as this past winter has shown. We all need to drive to work, bring our kids to school, and get help in an emergency. We need to upgrade our city to withstand our harshest weather conditions, and make it more climate-resistant.

We can’t defer maintenance on community buildings any longer. 

Park buildings and community centers have been closed or torn down because they’re unsafe and crumbling. These are valuable city assets, which are vital to our children, seniors, and neighborhoods.

Sports facilities and fields aren’t being cared for, or rely on volunteer labor. They’re not meeting the emerging athletic needs of our community, either.

Everyone wants clean water, so what can we do at the city level?

The use of lead pipes was stopped in 1978, over 45 years ago. But today, approximately 7% of our connecting pipes still contain lead, which can have serious impacts on our children’s health.

The City Council can expedite the replacement of lead pipes. And they can work with labor to find more innovative ways to make that money go further. They can also implement stormwater management strategies, like filtering our runoff water at the storm drains so that trash and PFAS-laden waste can’t reach the lake.

We need to re-prioritize infrastructure in the city budget, and expand our tax base through housing and business development. Duluth has roads and infrastructure to support a city with a much larger population, and we need to take advantage of that. We need to return to being a city of over 100,000 — a true City of the First Class.

Thank you for your support!

– Lynn Marie