Coloradans pay to have Jeffersonville's fuel tanks removed...

From Grace Schneider in the C-J...

For decades, Jeffersonville city leaders have known that one of the community's main entrances — 10th and Spring streets — has several underground fuel tanks that would need to be dug up and hauled away some day....

On Tuesday, city officials and state Rep. Steve Stemler, a Jeffersonville Democrat who operates a plumbing and sprinkler contracting business just blocks from the intersection, announced that the city would get a $158,500 federal stimulus grant to remove several of the underground tanks and clean up contaminated soil.

It's much easier to spend $158K of other people's money than our own money to clean up a local mess. The benefits are concentrated; the costs are diffused. The problem is that people in Jeff are also helping to pay for thousands of similar projects across the country.

The money is coming from the Indiana Finance Authority, which recently received $4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to assist with a limited list of Hoosier brownfields projects....

Local monies sent to the federal government, most of which is sent to a bureaucracy in Indiana which sends most of it out to local entities. How about we just keep all of the money here and make our own decisions without state and federal oversight?

The city has steadily begun to clean up the area of 10th and Spring. Eventually, Urban said, they'd like to create a master plan for 10th Street.

I would guess that there master plan includes hopes and strategies to get other people to pay for that too.