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| Pretty soon this is all local cities and towns will be able to afford. |
Boston Globe - As forecasters predict between up to 10 inches of snow between this afternoon and tomorrow, Peabody has almost reached it's budget capacity for snow removal, the town's Department of Public Services director said. The city has spent all but $20,000 of the $540,000 budgeted for this winter's snow removal, said Robert Langley, Peabody's public services director. "We've had so much snow, we basically took up about a year's worth the budget," Langley said.
Look, I just don't get this. Who is running the budgets in the cities around here? And don't give me that crap about we've already had so much snow, its the same shit every year. The only difference is cities and towns are running this story in January this year instead of a week or two into February. Same story every year.
This is New England people. You did grow up here right? Maybe you want to budget for more than 2 or 3 freaken snow storms? Snow doesn't just stop falling because we're in a recession. It's almost as if the people running these budgets have no financial planning or accounting background at all.
What makes it worse is that you know the Mayor of Boston is going to be on tv tonight urging all "non-essential" employees to stay home tomorrow (Menino included, guy has a hard enough time not falling down when its a dry sunny day, never mind throwing snow into the equation). So cities and town are taking a double whack, paying for snow removal, and paying for all the lazy government workers to stay home sipping hot chocolate and watching Maury.
Well here is an idea, instead of paying them to stay home, how about taking the days salary of anyone who doesn't show up and putting it towards the snow removal fund. Still not mandatory for them to work, but don't pay them if they choose not to. This is the real world and they're adults. I went to college, got a good job in the private sector and I still have to work on snow days, I don't think its too much to expect the guy GED equivalency degree that works the toll booth to show up to work in the snow. You're already vastly over paid and have a better retirement fund than I'll ever have, you can handle shoveling out your car and commuting to work.
