Public opinion polls routinely show Winnipeggers rate fixing our crumbling roads as a top concern.

Our politicians claim they understand that and use words like “priority” and “basic infrastructure” to describe the need to fix our roads. Yet, the same politicians regularly then go out and spend tons of money on all kinds of luxury projects that are anything but essential. How could they be so detached from reality?

Could the problem be that fixing your street simply won’t get your politician’s face in the paper? After all, there is no ribbon cutting ceremony when a pothole gets fixed. Or is it that the politicians making the spending decisions are like playful kittens – easily distracted by the next toy or shiny object to come along?

Before discussing a few examples of luxury projects that have distracted politicians and sucked up scarce tax dollars, let’s discuss money for a second.

In 2011, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a donation-based taxpayers’ watchdog organization, called up the City of Winnipeg’s Public Works department and asked – “what’s the cost of fixing the typical residential street in Winnipeg?”

The city bureaucrat told us Atwood Street in Transcona would be representative of a typical repair job. Some streets would cost more, some less, but we were told Atwood was a good one to go by. The street received 500 metres of a fresh new asphalt overlay for $350,000.

We snapped some photos of it; the street looked amazing. It was the type of road everyone living on a bumpy street dreamed of at night.

Given the relatively low cost of repairing Atwood, consider all the streets that could have been fixed with the tax dollars spent on luxury projects such as; the Winnipeg Convention Centre expansion ($114 million), the new stadium ($100 million+), the Human Rights Museum ($250 million+), the first phase of the rapid transit line ($138 million), the second phase of the rapid transit line ($600 million) or the new home for polar bears at the zoo ($31 million.)

You could also add the pedestrian bridge ($16 million) on the Red River to the list; the one located in between two existing bridges that also have space for pedestrians to use.

Make no mistake, one could question why some of those projects received tax dollars in the first place. But put that aside and just focus on the fact those luxury projects received funding while so many of our roads are crumbling.

What our politicians have done is akin to buying a big screen TV and putting it in a living room that has a leaky roof overhead. While fixing the roof may not be as sexy an expenditure as the TV, obviously it should have been the priority.

We should have seen, at the very least, a few years of governments really putting in a concentrated effort to fix up our embarrassing roads.

While not all politicians are at fault, it’s clear the ones who control our tax dollars have, despite what they claim, lost sight of the importance of fixing our roads. Unless you speak out and put pressure on your local politicians, don’t expect to see the roads you use fixed anytime soon.