We all know that our Summit County roads have deteriorated into small mine fields. It is now probably too cold to fix them. The potholes seem to appear in the same places each winter. Maybe someone in the highway departments should have been anticipating this.  

Then, too, even NPR took notice of the problems that perennially have plagued our postal system. The U.S. Postal Service responds that there isn’t enough labor force housing to maintain an adequate workforce.  Postal workers have to be borrowed from other locations, and even then, the post offices are hugely understaffed. People have to wait in line as much as two hours just to get their packages. Some folks can’t take that kind of time out of their work day, and the post offices’ hours don’t accommodate them.  

For decades on Summit County folks have been talking about building workforce housing. What is it that has our communities spending money on amphitheaters and hospitals, playgrounds and businesses but not acknowledging with foresight the need that teachers, nurses, police, fire, restaurant, grocery store, ski shop, and many other business and service employees have for affordable housing? Is it the greed of the builders or the reality that they, too, can’t make much of a living building these facilities? Is it local governments that haven’t realized the bind into which they have shoving their communities by kicking the can down the road and not having been well in front of a problem that’s was identified decades ago? Maybe government officials ought to have gotten more creative and devoted some of our tax money to solving this problem before it became the monster it has become. Maybe some of us should have shouted louder. Then maybe we could be getting our packages without long wait lines.