It has been almost a year since the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people. Within minutes of the collapse, infrastructure experts were on every cable news network spouting about how the United States has let its infrastructure deteriorate. And the issue faded away almost as quickly as it appeared #- to what should be no one's surprise.

Infrastructure improvements are expensive. Once done, no office holders or administrators gets thank you letters or photo ops (especially if they are sewer upgrades) from those impacted.

If anything they get complaints about the costs and disruptions. In a nutshell, infrastructure improvements are not a sexy thing for leaders to talk about, let alone act on.

Yet, for too long, the nation has had and will continue to have disasters, whether they are crumbling bridges and levees, which take lives when they fail or get people sick when sewers and water systems go down or become contaminated because they are not secure. Forget acts of God for a moment, normal wear and tear require governments to act. But they usually don't.

One doesn't have to look even outside of Cayuga County to see such a failure, no matter what staff argues for the re-investment of funds to make sure things keep working.

The discussion about moving the county's main offices from Genesee Street to County House Road would not resonate as much right now, if it wasn't that the county, in the past, to the point of possibly no return, has refused to maintain its facilities at 160 Genesee St. While some of the problems at the County Office Building may have been inevitable with time, there is no question that the failure of a string of sitting legislatures and their chairs over the decades has exacerbated the situation, to where abandonment and building anew sounds somewhat rational.

As has been mentioned here in the past, County Manager Wayne Allen started, rightfully, to propose a five-year capital plan more than a year ago. It still sits un-adopted. Everyone on the 6th floor might agree that improvements need to be made, but, they are unwilling to go to taxpayers to bond for them. Instead, they continue to take a piecemeal approach to building improvements, whether it is the county's Mental Health facilities problem or its 911 radio outages.

Local leaders would rather violate Thomas Jefferson's maxim of “Don't put off to tomorrow what can be done today” #- especially if they can saddle their successors with the bills.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com