We don’t know about your routine, but as for us, we don’t do as much stretching as we should. Oh, we get on the treadmill five days a week and head to nowhere for 40 minutes plus. And we engage in a variety of other physical activities, ranging from the glazed donut lift to the pay per bag carry out.
But we only touch our toes once or twice a year, and only when we have no choice, if you know what we mean.
But it looks like we all better practice up, because as we read the news, it’s time to ‘stand by for incoming.’
By that we mean this item on the Town Council Agenda for the meeting this coming Monday (the 15th).
111. The Town Council will consider setting a public hearing for November 5, 2012, to adopt a “Resolution Amending the 2012-13 Budget Appropriating $174,500 from the Unassigned Balance of the General Fund to Fund the School Department’s Facilities
Master Plan – Phase II,” and will take any appropriate action.
This leads us to ask the following.
1) Why is Municipal Government proposing to appropriate funds for the School Department, when the latter is the largest portion of town spending, and should take care of their own needs from their own budgeted funds?
2) How much was spent on the “Facilities Master Plan – Phase I,” and who paid for it? Who were the funds given too, and what was the resulting delivered product? What did it propose, and why wasn’t it sufficient to plan for the future?
3) $174,500, applied to consulting services at a generous rate of $5,000 per man-week, would cover roughly 35 weeks of professional services. Does it really require eight plus months of very expensive professional services to come up with a “Facilities Master Plan – Phase II,” especially considering that a Phase I plan has already been paid for?
There is a point at which those who pay for such things should cry Bravo Sierra, and we believe that point has already been passed. The thought that our so-called ‘public servants’ need to spend this much more to create an argument that we need to spend something like $40 million or so to ‘maintain our school system excellence’ is repulsive.
This, it is ever so clear, is the normal modus operandi of those who see OPM as just so much jingle ready for the taking. The next time you see one of these big spenders, why don’t you ask them to explain why figuring out how much more we need to spend costs so much?
And why they can’t do it themselves?
OK, now, hold on to those toes. This will only take a minute.
You know what? We just realized we’re not sure whether this should be called ‘limbering up,’ or ‘getting down.’ Either way, the end result will be the same. They win, you lose.
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