A little progress is still progress

A recent post from Westword teased readers with this reporting:

Denver had a 2020 goal of building twenty miles of sidewalk, but only six miles' worth was completed.

A lack of resources isn't helping, says DSP director Jill Locantore. She estimates that it would cost $1.1 billion to complete Denver's sidewalk network, "but the previous year's expenditure was around $2 to $3 million. At that level, it would take more than 400 years to finish. And who knows if the Earth is even going to exist in 400 years?"

You can read the entire post here, and there is far more to it than some breathtaking math. My favorite part is the final quote from Locantore. Now there's a city planner who doesn't let her optimism about life get out of control.

Regarding math: I know a million is a tiny fraction of a billion, but the difference between $2 million and $3 million is not nothing. And that range ends up being about 550 years if the annual sidewalk repair budget is $2 million, down to a "mere" 366 years, give or take, if the budget averages $3 million per year.

Of course, over that amount of time today's dollars will certainly lose value, so that current $1.1 billion estimate most likely balloons to double or triple that amount.

The point of the rough guesstimate, I suppose, is that we aren't making enough progress currently to EVER replace the Denver sidewalks -- after all, over 400 years most sidewalks would need to be rebuilt ten times.

This seems like a predicament rather than a problem. A predicament is something that is a challenge, but we mostly just have to live with it. For instance, Colorado is famous for its changeable weather, which can cause everything from traffic accidents to damaged plants to flattened cornfields. Most people don't discuss unpredictable weather as a problem. It's something to understand and try to prep for, but no one is going to "solve" the weather.

Figuring out how to efficiently edit audio levels in Adobe Premier Pro (one of my challenges tomorrow, as it turns out) is an actual problem which I fully expect to solve.

We all get very frustrated when we mix up predicaments with problems, and the Denver sidewalk replacement project seems like the former. 

It's a "lost cause," but as we learn in the 1939 Frank Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for. We know none of us will be around in 400 years to check on the project's progress, but I would say that NOT letting that get in the way means we are fighting the right fight. 

There is a saying that we plant trees for the next generation.

Perhaps the Denver sidewalk replacement project is for some future country.