"Why Galesburg has no money" never even suggests that Galesburg has no money. Not only that, but it never tells us anything about the actual financial shape of

"Why Galesburg has no money" never even suggests that Galesburg has no money. Not only that, but it never tells us anything about the actual financial shape of this town. Is Galesburg running in the red? It's not easy to tell from searching. It's a 30k person town, so that doesn't really surprise me. I don't really understand why road maintenance is the huge problem Strong Towns thinks it is. The Urban Institute says that roads and highways account for about 5% of spending by state and local governments [1]. I agree that development in an urban core is way better than sprawl, but I don't think road costs are the big issue. Quality of life and being able to walk to stuff seems a lot more important, and honestly if you want to save some money in a municipality, you should start looking at stuff like correction expenditures which have increased by over 350% since the late 70s [2]. [1] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/highway-and-road-expenditures https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative... [2] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/criminal-justice-police-corrections-courts-expenditures#Question3Police https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...