We (me and one remaining ally; the other two were ABSENT!)tried to save the taxpayers a little money last night...maybe as much as $4 MILLION by waiting until the results of the grant application were announced..there was a chance, slim but still a chance, that we would get stimulus funding for the fire station. We successfully got a provision for an "additive alternative" for waiting 60 days for the bid awards in the bidding process in order to give the granting agency time to act but the dark side wanted to go RIGHT NOW and screw the grant application.
Their arguments were nonsense. They resorted to ad hominem attacks. and they knew that they had us by one vote even if our other two allies showed up....so the vote to award the bids now went 6-2 in their favor.
Then there were alternatives that would being the project even MORE over budget...three alternatives for a total of $360K...and guess what....they went 6-2, 6-2, and 6-2....
So we're getting a new fire station and the taxpayers are getting stuck with the full $350,000 to $400,000 annual debt service for 15 or 20 years.
Nice move dummies.
