It's a long way between Peepdale and Little Creek. Peeps have to move at 1/24 human speed to get around and between the villages. That means slow, back breaking walk or a lot of muddy knees.
There has to be a better way! Sometimes, an enterprising peep will create a taxi or bus to carry peeps between towns. Sometimes, the town governments will work together on a large public transit system. This year, a committee with members from all three towns got together to plan the first ever three town transit system.
The federal government has tram technology (which brings up an interesting question about the transfer of knowledge and technology generationally in Village) but its expensive - close to $30,000 to bring through customs. Another enterprising peep spent a few weeks creating a high speed rail system. But how could the towns work together to make the dreams a reality?
Almost everyone thought the idea was interesting, but there was a catch: it was very expensive. A further complication - if the cost was split evenly, one of the towns would be close to bankruptcy. The transportation committee decided to propose that each town spend 1/3 of its money on the project. Little Creek and Mini-sota would spend over $8000 each and Peepdale would spend $3100.
But was that fair? It certainly wasn't equal. A lot of peeps had concerns.
Why did they have less money? Peepdale had decided to give a lot of land to each individual peep who would then give 1/8 of their money to the town. The town's bank account had about $13000 in it at the beginning of the game. By contrast, the other towns had given half their land to the town - and, even though town land is undeveloped and only worth a quarter of privately held land, they still had access to 25,920 in the bank. After the tax, the Peepdale citizens could take out a loan of a little above $4536 - compared to the other town's $5184. They were land rich and cash poor.
But wasn't this Peepdale's choice? Hadn't they decided to give themselves a lot of land? Some of Peepdale's citizens pointed out that they weren't sure of everything that would happen when they made the decision. Some Mini-Sotans countered that other towns shouldn't have to pay for Peepdale's choices.
A system that doesn't include Peepdale would be a lot cheaper. But isolating Peepdale might have an impact on the economies of Mini-sota and Little Creek - especially during mini-fair.
As of Thursday, the Peepdale and Mini-Sota had passed the proposal but their was a ground swell for repealing it in Mini-Sota. Transportation committee members were hard at work lobbying for their cause. It looked like their might be enough votes in Little Creek but the anti-Tri-Link lobbyists were also busy trying to convince folks that the deal was unfair.
Stay tuned!
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