On Monday, June 16, the city of Durango will hold a public meeting to inform residents about their plan to change Main Avenue into a dining and lounging street. The meeting is going to be held at the Durango Public Library from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m.
Even if you believe this makeover of downtown is a good thing, there is a compelling reason to oppose it.
The city engineers have found that the pipes under the street are failing and have to be replaced.
It is going to cost millions of dollars to replace this infrastructure. What the planners seem to be unwilling to address is that most of the pipes in the downtown area and the avenues are the same age as the ones under Main. So the logical question is: Why are we going to spend additional millions turning Main Avenue into a monument to the Multi-Modal Department instead of focusing on fixing the rest of the outdated and failing infrastructure downtown?
And that doesn’t include the streets and alleys that need paving, the sidewalks in town that are deteriorating and replacing the dangerous flashing red light crossing on Camino del Rio.
Unless the city passes a bond issue to dramatically raise taxes, Durango does not have the money. Fix the problem and leave Historic Main Avenue alone. The city has probably already spent nearly a million dollars on this boondoggle. Make your voice heard at Monday’s meeting.
Jackson Clark
Durango
