I wonder why Windham went from a rich town (town manager’s words) to a town hall that can’t afford to stay open five days a week.

I remember the promise that as the business district grows, our residential property taxes will decrease. It certainly didn’t happen in Windham, along with many other municipalities as well. Windham has had a lot of growth in both the commercial and residential sections and yet we have lost services such as a transfer station and bulky waste removal, which is something many smaller towns have. We have tax increment financing districts and yet one still sees an infrastructure nightmare in North Windham especially with the maze of wires and cables from Boody’s Corner to Whites Bridge Road.

I fear that Windham has fallen for the Ponzi scheme that growth will always pay for itself in perpetuity. In other words, as long as the town continues to grow, it will always have enough money to pay for the increased cost of building new infrastructure and maintaining it forever. One can see how our nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges are falling apart all over our nation because of a lack of funds to do proper maintenance and repair. Miles of railroad lines are being closed down for the very same reason. Especially during the summer months, the North Windham business district has become a traffic nightmare because of a lack of adequate bypasses to alleviate traffic problems. I guess I could state that while growth of that area continues, proper planning for the future didn’t.

In Windham and I am sure in other places as well, it isn’t only the business sections that have a problem. Windham has a surprising number of private roads that more than likely will never meet the standards to become public roads. I have to surmise that allowing someone to subdivide their property without any type of road standards has led to Windham having driveways with multiple houses on them. It certainly becomes a problem when the fire department cannot get enough equipment to properly extinguish a house fire. Winter maintenance has become another nightmare on these private roads as well because homeowners (and I don’t blame them one bit) expect the same services that other property owners receive.

Combine the cost of maintaining all of Windham’s infrastructure with a decline in state and federal funding for both the municipal and school budgets and all one is left with is a recipe for financial disaster. That’s not something that is decades away and we will witness that as the budget process works its way through the process this spring. Because an ever-increasing amount of money is needed to expand social programs such as Medicare and food stamps, there more than likely will be less money for town and school budgets as well as for roads and other infrastructure. And that’s just the beginning for years to come as Maine legislators fail to uphold the laws on municipal revenue sharing and funding 55 percent of the cost of local schools.

As far as maintaining roads and bridges, it was once believed that the taxes and surcharges on fuels would pay for the expansion and maintenance forever. However, as fuel mileage for all vehicles increases and the amount of miles we drive decreases, coupled with energy-saving vehicles powered by electricity, the amount of revenue collected is far from adequate, so states and towns are seeking a shrinking amount of federal grants. But there’s something far worse when a town has to borrow more and more to keep maintaining infrastructure along with the equipment necessary to maintain it.

I am not saying that all growth is bad. Growth means jobs. Perhaps the best term I could use is controlled growth, which will take strong leadership between the town councilors, town manager, town planner and planning board which sadly in Windham just isn’t happening.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham wonders why snow shuts down our government.