Jeff Siegel needs to ease up on the wine he keeps reviewing

Street reconstruction like this is paid for with capital spending

I’m thinking that’s the reason this Advocate reporter keeps jumping at wrong headed conclusions. Yesterday he wrote about City Manager Mary Suhm’s upcoming budget briefing, which admittedly I have not read (I was more interested in the “From Trash to Treasure” briefing also on Wednesday’s agenda), and he talked about how dire it sounds — how the number of cops will be cut, the number of rec centers that will be shuttered, etc. But then he wrote:

“But, because this is Dallas, we will ‘continue investment in infrastructure through capital spending’ — which is money for a toll road that isn’t going to be built and bridges that we don’t need.”

No, it doesn’t mean that at all. What it means is that extensive repairs — such as the complete reconstruction of many of our roads — will be handled through the sale of bonds. These types of projects were the emphasis of the bond proposal that immediately preceded the last one. Money for filling potholes comes out of the General Fund; money for completely replacing a street’s pavement comes from capital spending.