Perhaps Salem taxpayers could clean your pool too?

A lot more people bowl in Salem than fly. Why haven't we got a municipal bowling alley? Image via Wikipedia

A SkyWest employee thinks it's cool that the City of Salem wants to keep throwing money at airlines, while it's cutting back on parks, libraries, police and fire.

Now Matt's probably a cool guy, but what would be really cool is if Matt and his employer and all the other airport users got together and offered to buy the airport so that Salem, which is cutting basic services and amenities available to all, wouldn't be subsidizing the airlines and the general aviation folks any more. Salem needs to own an airfield just as much as it needs to own a bowling alley. Back in the 1920's, publicly owned airfields might have made sense, but now, 90 years later, not so much. Or at all, really.

Let's let the market decide whether it actually makes sense to try to run scheduled air service out of Salem -- oil's at $85 a barrel now, we could easily see another run towards $200 this summer, the airlines are losing billions annually and can't make any money with oil over $60, and Salem's downtown is inching towards that scary tipping point where the disinvestment is going to prompt more disinvestment. We need every taxpayer dollar invested here in the basic services and amenities that are offered to everyone, not just those who travel using the method that pollutes the most per mile.