Tuesday, July 5, 2016

How to waste tax-payer money

A couple of weeks ago we got notice from the township that they'd be fixing up our culvert that sends the waters of the Indian Creek under Concession 20 and on into Bass Lake and the Indian River. Not that we'd ever noticed anything wrong with that culvert. We've been here eight or nine years and that culvert seems to work just fine. In fact, I walk the hounds across that bridge/culvert twice a day, and it's always seemed OK to me.

But, I'm not an engineer, so what the fuck, you gotta give the experts the benefit of the doubt.

So today the job started. We've got rental traffic lights at each end of the work zone. That in itself is hilarious, because you can clearly see across the fifty foot work zone from either end. All they needed was a "yield to oncoming traffic" sign at either end of the work zone. Instead, they rented traffic lights for either end... on a road that might have a hundred vehicles pass by on a busy day.

It get's better. At 7:30 this evening we heard a generator kick in. It was the generator for the construction lights. Yup, the night crew needs their lights! A good hour and a half before sun-set.

Near as we can tell, the day crew knocked off at five o'clock, and there is no night crew. As I write these words it's after ten o'clock, the lights are a-blaze on our wee bridge, and there is no fucking night crew in sight...

WTF?

Now I'm not blaming the lads on the county bridge crew. Those are just regular folks doing their jobs. But I could, were I consulted, point out a lot of places in this county where their endeavours are more earnestly required than here at Falling Downs.

At this time of night we have about one or two cars per hour coming down the road. We don't need two portable traffic signals and a generator-run bevy of construction lights to manage all this non-activity.

Get the fuck outta here!

1 comment:

  1. Addendum; silly of me to miss this obvious point, now that the Farm Manager has pointed it out; they gotta keep the lights on all night just in case somebody drives into the construction hole and launches legal action against the county!

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