Hump day

Wednesday. Midweek report.  Not much too report.

Situation is normal, although the horizon shows some interesting prospects.

The topic/issue of the two former elementary schools was touched upon by a couple of commentators yesterday.  You should in fact see an article on the STM warrant related to the buildings.  It will deal with "interim" expenses for the buildings.  Most notably electricity and alarm service cost.  

Rehabbing the buildings for whatever purpose by whatever party will be an interesting prospect indeed, not to mention an expensive one.  Something that will unfortunately have to be dealt with down the road, but not too far down the road, because there isn't enough gas in the tank take too long a journey on this issue.

Now if we follow the priceless argument some had used when pushing to keep these buildings, well one of the buildings anyway, you might be licking your chops at the prospective money the town could realize from a sale.

In the real world, neither building approaches the "priceless" price tag.  The debate over the future of these two buildings can in all probability be written out right now with near 100% accuracy.   In all likelihood so can the result.  

I will being doing neither though, at least not at this point.  There is always a certain amount of vetting that needs to be done on any issue.  Let it happen.  It should have begun in earnest the day after the decision was made on the debt exclusion vote, but it didn't. It is now progressing, so let the wheel turn.

Shifting gears ...

I have had and been dragged into some interesting discussions lately.  The ones I have are by choice.  The ones I get dragged into are to an extent also by choice, i.e. I don't use the brains the good Lord gave me and refuse to be involved in them.  Either way, the same have been interesting.

One of the more interesting ones is how to find new revenue for the town.  I will leave the specific concept discussed unmentioned.  Primarily because the what it is could be applied to any concept.

It is important to remember that the need for new revenue sources is driven by the real concern and unfortunately the real facts that under the constraints of Prop 2 1/2 life as it exists is extremely difficult at best to maintain, and will near certainly require changes.

Ideas to bring in more revenue need to be driven by that fact.  So why I was presented the idea, I asked how that benefits the town.  The answer was it provides better services to the Town. My response was no it doesn't.  It provides a new service (from this point just follow the free flow okay).  But it makes money for the town.  To provide a new service.  What's wrong with that?  Well isn't that a service more appropriate for the private sector? Well we can do it better.  Maybe, maybe not, is that a reason for government to do something?

I could carry on the conversation for awhile, but it come down to this: what function is government suppose to serve?

You are going to be hearing some very interesting debates over that concept, along with what functions are more important than others, and just what level of service do we provide for the important ones.  I am hearing some from interesting "rumors" about what some people are advocating on that concept.  

You are going to hear about cuts that probably cannot be made, legally and even if you want them.  You are going to hear about saving lives, about preventing tragedy and about a whole lot of reasons why some individual matter must be funded.

You will hear all the things that when questioned, or when reality is presented, earn some the certain labels.  Everyone has a function in the process folks.  And the process rightly must consider everything, not just a matter looked at it a vacuum.

Bottom line, believe it or not, not all good guys wear white hats.