From Construction to Calamity to Silver Lining

The construction in Malta has been anything but delightful, no news there.

The optimist in me, however, has found the silver lining in the Water Project and that is the betterment of my sense of direction and feel for the City of Malta.

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road . . . unless you fail to make the turn,” Helen Keller once wrote. Well, old Helen never tried to understand the detour signs set up around Malta -- which she perhaps had a hand in setting up (just a thought.)

Well, in the spirit of got lemons, make lemonade, I have created my own detour for driving from my house to the PCN office, a map that includes streets I had not much traveled before that keet me free of road rage and scrapping the bottom of my car across the mountains of asphalt that bury temporary waterlines around town . . .a Malta Magellan, if you will.

Before the construction, I would drive to work in a mostly straight line, paying no attention to street signs as I made my .6-mile trip to the office. When construction started, roads all around town were dug up and “Road Closed” signs popped up like dandelions. Pretty soon, your old reporter had only one way to get to his house from work without making his car “screeeeecchhhh” as the metal undercarriage of his car touched asphalt. The new route to work has me more familiar with the streets and avenues around town. I no longer say, “oh yeah, over by Ken and Lana Ulrich’s house,” and instead I know that is the intersection of S. 4th Street E. and S. 3rd Avenue E. Instead of telling someone “drive behind Mustang Field by the cemetery” I can now say, with confidence, “over on 5th South Ave East.” For this “out of town Rube,” my detour has improved my lingo about the city I reside in (take your wins where you can get them, folks).

As our city is tore up, watercooler talk and social media is vibrant with complaints about the project, how haphazardly it has progressed and the folks who initiated it, our Malta City Council. While I agree the construction has turned our city into a scene from Road Warrior, I would like to thank the council members, Malta Mayor Shyla Jones and the Public Works Crew for the job they are doing with the cluster-jam.

Progress has been slow since the construction started and some of that has to do with the sub-par workmanship being done by some of the contractors. The council, mayor and Public Works crew have had to babysit on some of the project, demanding that work which was not up to par be re-done. Had they not been so diligent in making sure this expensive project was being done correctly, chances are that the work would have to be re-done again in the next few years and cost you and I even more money. Call me a shill for the City if you’d like – many of you already have – but I appreciate the job they are doing and at the end of the day, they are tax-paying citizens of Malta as well and are looking out for the their best interests as well as ours.

Someday we will all look back and laugh at the “Summer Construction Calamity of 2016,” …someday. Let us hope that what started out rocky will smooth out in years to come and for the betterment of the City of Malta and its residents. In the meantime, try to find your silver lining and if you need help in finding it, meet me over on the corner of 1st Avenue E. and S. 8th Street E. (AKA the City Pool.)