At Mondays City Council meeting it was noted that the Fire Chief had saved the city $650,000.00 by purchasing a used pumper from Rotterdam for $45,000.00. What seems odd as far as the "savings" goes is this: Did, in fact, the city have in it's possession $695,000.00 and were they prepared if so having said funds, to allocate them for said truck. If the city was in fact never in ACTUAL possession of said funds then they never were actually in a position to purchase a truck for that said amount. Therefore they could not realistically declare such a saving. It would be like someone stating they were going to buy a Lexus for $75,000.00, but never actually had that amount in their possession, then buying a $10,000.00 vehicle and then declaring the difference, $65,000.00, a saving. More than likely the city may have been able to afford a truck for say $100,000.00. Therefore a more realistic saving of $55,000.00 could be declared, providing they actually had the $100,000.00 to begin with. After all we are supposed to be broke. But the savings stated at the council meeting sounds better, especially in an election year. By the way if we did save $650,000.00 why the need for Central Park cleanup volunteers? Why not put it to street maint? You get the point, the $695,000.00 was never there. |