"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Thursday 21 June 2012

What's A Million

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The $450,000 Question":

10 years x 450,000 is 4.5 million, Evelyn, not 10 million. Unless there is a half-million extra in there somewhere that you didn't mention?

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It's not the same every year. Depends on the linear feet or metre being done..
Memory suggests some years have been considerably higher.
And the price was ten per cent higher to begin with.
If we hadn't discovered Newmarket has been getting a price ten per cent less than us, this year's contract would have been $495,000.
Lookit, we saved the taxpayers ten per cent this year  with our acuity.
Whatever  the total  is, this outfit has done better than it should  out of  Aurora taxpayers.
To discover after ten years of contracts, our neighbour to the north  was getting the same  service for  ten per cent less  is a bitter pill to swallow. 
The outrage is worth  ten million whichever way you slice it.
Add that figure to the amount handed over to the Culture Pirates of Occupied  Town Space  of Church Street School,  with no accountability to the people who pay the taxes and we come up with  a figure in excess of a million.
A million here
A million there
Here a Mill
There a Mill 
Everywhere a million mill. 
Let anybody look me in the eye and tell me our  town is fiscally  efficient.. 
Month after month Council retains consultants to do  work traditionally the responsibility of public works.
At the same time, we placidly accept that we need to spend $22 million dollars to increase accommodation  for the same operation which we continually diminish by contracting work out.
The same rationale suggests a tube inserted into a pipe will prevent ground water from infiltrating into the pipe ,increasing the flow of sludge to its given destination without ever knowing how much ground water there is or how much sludge being diluted.
Now they are going to spend millions, a statement made in all seriousness in a public meeting,  to develop a measurement to prove it has  been worthwhile to spend billions in York Region  to prevent ground water from infiltrating into sewer sludge.  
Wouldn't surprise me  either to hear the Region got an environmental award from the silly asses at Queen's Park for their  environmental initiative.  .
We are awfully big on winning awards
It proves how all-fired smart we are..

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought the Treasurers' job entailed yelling his head off when Council was heading for an expenditure cliff. Not heard a word so far but feel free to correct me if I missed an episode.