Now that the voters of Trumann have given the okay to extend the sales tax and bonds for water, sewer and capital improvements, the city now has a responsibility to use that money wisely to make the promised improvements.

Already the new sewer curtains have been ordered, and it won't be long before the city orders new water pumps to replace several aging ones.

Those projects are money well spent and long overdue.

The city will also have $870,000 for street repairs. While that isn't a king's ransom and won't go very far given the high cost of asphalt, the city needs to take a proactive approach and sit down and prioritize which roads they want to fix.

That doesn't mean doing patch jobs here and patch jobs there which seems to have been the way the city has done business in the past.

When the next city council is seated they should sit down together and hold a special retreat and do some strategic planning and come up with a three or four year plan and come up with a list of projects that are the most pressing and stick to it.

That way, the city will actually have a long range plan which they can follow instead of making reactive decisions and waiting until someone complains about potholes on their street.

A good place to consider spending some of that money is on the medians. Quite frankly, the medians along Highway 463 are embarrassing eyesores. They are crumbling and weed infested and don't make for a very nice first impression when you drive through town.

And would it be asking too much to fix Main Street? You can't find a parking space that doesn't have holes or gobs of uneven asphalt patches which were just haphazardly filled.

The voters wisely gave the city the authority to make improvements to the city.

Now it's up to city officials to deliver in a big way.