Seismic Upgrades for Kids or for Me

Doing seismic upgrades to buildings is a good thing. The fact that Oregon legislators are considering funding seismic retrofit measures is something they should be commended for doing.

Now it appears they will face a bit of a conundrum. See: Plan would upgrade Oregon schools at risk in earthquake. This is a terrific idea! The hitch is that another measure is also being considered that would retrofit the state's capitol building.  

The issue is that both proposals/needs are about the same cost, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. What will they do?

1. Try to fund both schools and retrofitting the capitol building. Will they commit that level of resources to this one aspect of disaster resilience at the cost of funding other capital projects?
2. Fund only the school projects.
3. Fund only the capitol building seismic upgrade.
4. Not fund either one.

It could be political suicide to do No. 3 if there is an earthquake where a school collapses or children are injured.

More likely they will choose one of the other three. The most cost effective and politically expedient is to fund neither. Perhaps compromise will reign and they will modify option No. 1 and commit limited funds to the projects and do them in a series of phases over a period of years.

It will be interesting to watch!