Rhea announces 2021 scholarship winner!
Congratulations to Emily Ferguson, the winner of Rhea’s 2021 Scholarship!
Each year the college students of Rhea employees take part in a scholarship program that includes a scholarship sent directly to their schools as well as an essay competition with a $500 hand money prize.
The 2021 Essay Topic was America’s Aging Infrastructure – How can we fix it in the next decade?” We asked the students to pick one topic from three infrastructure sectors - transportation, utility, and energy – and to review what is being done, what is being planned, and what is being discussed as possibilities to repair the damage, and how will we pay for the repairs.
Emily focused on the transportation sector. One option she discussed was P3s:
“Another plan that has been suggested for the city of Pittsburgh is Public Private Partnerships, also referred to as P3s. According to the Pitt News, the P3s method is the future of infrastructure development. This method of progress requires the government to be contracted with a private businesses or businesses to complete infrastructure repairs. This method was successful in developing express lanes connecting Washington D.C. to Virginia, however, people can potentially view this form of development as businesses profiting on taxpayer dollars (Miller).”
Emily also discussed President Biden’s infrastructure plan:
“In late March of this year, Biden announced that he would be introducing a two trillion-dollar investment to help better the infrastructure and environment (Tamari). The investment would be divided up to various aspects of our economy: 620 billion for transportation, 500,000 for electrical vehicle charging stations, 180 billion for research and development, and some money for manufacturing and training. The plan is set to be ongoing for over eight years (Tamari). Now this plan may sound really good, however, where is this money going to come from? According to the Biden administration, this investment will increase taxes on businesses by trillions of dollars (Tamari). There are pros and cons to this investment, pros being that businesses will benefit of having new and improved infrastructure to their businesses. More people will have access to shorter and improved routes, as well as more means of transportation (Tamari). Cons include that businesses will have a 7% tax increase, which in turn will increase product prices to their buyers (Tamari). No matter what, the businesses will have to increase their prices on the items they are selling in order to stay above the water in their business. This tax increase can be crippling to small business owners and companies especially because they are still trying to recover from the pandemic of this past year.”
“Ultimately, if the disrepair of Pittsburgh’s infrastructure is being recognized on a national level, it is apparent that we need to fix the problem before it worsens. The sooner that we start making changes to the city the better.”
Emily makes many interesting points both pro and con in her paper. Click on the button below to read the entire paper.
Thanks for your insights Emily, and congratulations again!