Why consider the colour of the house when the foundation is cracked?

I'd love to ask Sam Katz that question.

More specifically, I'd like to know why he's been talking about different strategies for renaming city streets to honour outstanding citizens.

"To do a street name change is very challenging," Katz said in a Nov. 19 Winnipeg Sun article ("Katz touts 'honorary' streets"). Apparently the city is going to get around the problem by keeping the existing street names while putting up signage that indicates who is being honoured.

Well isn't that wonderful?

May I recommend a few people we might want to consider despite the fact they don't live in Winnipeg?

How about Sigourney Weaver, star of the 2003 movie Holes?

Or perhaps Alanson Brush, one of the gentlemen who developed shock absorbers for automobiles.

Maybe Charles Goodyear deserves a street for inventing the vulcanization of rubber, which helps tires stay intact even when faced with jagged potholes and uneven surfaces.

All sarcasm aside, dedicating crumbling, potholed stretches of lunar terrain to our finest citizens is both an insult to those citizens and all the other Winnipeggers who drive our roads. Do I think the late Rev. Harry Lehotsky deserves a street for his work in the inner city? Absolutely - but I think he deserves something better than the pock-marked cattle paths we accept as roads.

Also in the news on Nov. 19 was the proposed expansion of Kenaston Boulevard to finally address the city's north-south traffic problem - at least, sort of. It's a first step, perhaps, but I doubt that problem will go away before I die.

Another story talked about the expropriation of a downtown business to make way for a rapid-transit corridor that might cut a few minutes from 40-minute bus trips that would take 10 minutes by car or 20 by bike. I don't know. I hear a lot about rapid transit but have not once found transit in Winnipeg to be rapid.

Lacking was an announcement that traffic lights on Portage, McPhillips and Broadway have finally been synchronized, but we've been waiting for that since Mayor Katz was elected in 2006, so what's another three years?

All in all, I don't think I'm exaggerating by saying we have an infrastructure and transportation crisis in this city. Not a problem - a crisis.

Solving that crisis is certainly not an overnight affair, but it is one of the greatest challenges facing our city. I hear rhetoric coming from City Hall from time to time about how the administration is committed to urban renewal and efficient transportation.

That might be true, but then I also hear about window dressing that might result in Crash Test Dummies Crescent.

My suggestion? Let's honour our great citizens by fixing the city they built. Once that's done - once traffic is flowing, transit is efficient and crumbling roads are fixed - then we can spend some money on feel-good signage.

If Sam Katz wants a street dedicated to him when he leaves office, he'd better start filling the potholes now.

Otherwise, I think we should take the worst street in the city and dedicate it to Katz himself as a reminder of the decay that occurred on his watch.

Mike Warkentin would rather walk.