dig your own grave and save!
The $270+ million incinerator in Clarington isn't anywhere close to being built, but shortly after its ground breaking it is already failing the sniff test.
And what more than a few are smelling is our tax dollars going up in smoke.
The Toronto Star reported on the event held to celebrate the ground-breaking here:
The article outlines the August 17th event was held for 175 people, referred to as the "best of the best". You know, the 1%.
The cost of the event was over $75,000, which would still be outlandish but wouldn't be an issue if this private party was paid for by the private sector, but the Region of York (which coincidently is $2billion dollars in debt) looks to be on the hook for a portion of it.
And that is perhaps the source of a collective WTF? being heard around the GTA.
Through F.O.I. requests the Star was able to report a breakdown of those costs which include:
$11,000+ for food which consisted of jumbo shrimp, sushi, mini sliders canapés, fine cheeses, beef-stuffed Yorkshire puddings and potato chips with "truffle salt"
$2,000+ for "luxury" portable toilets
and $5,000+ for minature "souvenir" shovels
Brining the total cost to a stagering $429 for each attendee. Meaning, that it would cost the following to provide for each:
a free lunch - $65
use of the toilet - $14
and for that minature shovel trinket - $30
Whoever decided to hand out tchotchkes obviously doesn't undertand how or when to use swag. There's a great FastCompany article on the subject here:
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Money aside isn't the underlying issue of this project one to do with reducing waste?
Aren't we inindated by endless educational efforts on behalf of the region on the town to reduce consumption?
I have a hard time swallowing the belief that this party was zero-waste (perhaps not as hard as a truffle salted potato chip), so how much garbage did this party produce aside for $30 shovels?
And then there's the issue of ignoring and excluding those "pesky" protesters.
In the Toronto Star article Bowmanville residents Cathrine McKeever and her husband, James, were reported as among the handful of private citizens invited to attend. Staunch supporters of the plant, they agreed with the decision to exclude the general public. Opponents “would have disrupted a very happy occasion,” says McKeever, who was offended by protesters “screaming and waving placards.”
I guess the ratio of protestors to those invited which was 1:2 was lost on McKeever.
To her they're not the 99%, only the 50% so they don't need to be heard.
Disgusting.
The Era Banner covered the issue in an article here:
It was incredibly insulting to hear Aurora mayor Geoff Dawe's comments where he seems to want to sidestep the issue claiming he doesn’t have experience with ground-breaking ceremony expenses.
“I was aware of the event because I was invited and attended. I wasn’t aware of the cost. The event didn’t seem over the top and I don’t have a sense of what these things cost,” he said. “But it seems like a fair chunk of money.”
Read that statement again.
The event didn't seem over the top?
“If you look at policy and historically, York Region often hosts events for infrastructure we’ve built. This isn’t anything extraordinary,”
This isn't anything extrordinary?
He seems to echo Cathrine McKeever's comments :
"The lunch wasn’t that extravagant, she notes. “I’ve seen other events where the ‘antis’ were at the table digging in.” Her souvenir spade, she adds, is actually a useful letter opener."
The fact that Mrs. Mckeever doesn't get it, is sad.
But Mayor Dawe?
WTF?
Practicaly the only thing he left out was the statement "Let them eat cake!"...with truffle salt.
If he hasn't heard of local outcry over the expenditure he most certainly will now.
From the comments section of the Star article here are a couple of note:
"It isn't enough that taxpayers have to foot the bill for this whole incinerator mess but have to pay for the ground-breaking party as well. This celebration was excessive. - especially in these times. Commemorative shovels? This is an incinerator, not an art gallery. The only people really happy about this garbage burning facility are the people making money from it. We keep hearing about limitations on what our property taxes can buy us and cutbacks. I don't see any cutbacks in this."
and this one:
"Entitled, government employees that have no understanding of tax payer’s funds stroking their big egos when it comes to simply doing their job. Non disclosure, secret monies circulating, nothing before council…fraudulently misusing taxpayer’s money, if it’s not open, it’s deceitful."
If I recall it was Mayor Dawe who campaigned on a platform of fiscal responsibility.
This is the exact opposite of fiscal responsibility, and ignorance is not an excuse.
And to say that he didn't aknowledge the opulence at the event is even more insulting, especialy when the same Mayor is entering our town's budget process this week does not reinforce for me that he will be exercising any good judgement at the table in those deliberations.
Perhaps Mayor Geoff Dawe should consider leaving his shovel at the reception desk at town hall for tax payers to use to open our tax bills which no doubt be higher, but as Aurorans there's nothing extraordinary about that.
Or he could use it to either start digging his political grave, or a way out of the shit he just dived into.
Either way there are very few of us that didn't attend this event that will suffer from "shovel envy".
Shovel Envy is a term coined by Tony Goldmark as the phenomenon of experts in a field frustrated and slightly bitter by the resources young novices have in that same field. Resources unheard of when the older expert was but a young novice himself.
You can read Mr. Goldmark's comments in their entirety and in context to the original WIRED article here: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1
Here's a snippet:
"Imagine your job, your passion in life, is to dig, and all you have to dig with is a spoon. But you love digging so much you make that spoon work as best as you can. Then someone invents a shovel. Wouldn't that piss you off, that amateur diggers have such convenience of technology at their fingertips, while you had to work with a fucking spoon? And rather than embrace shovels as the wave of the future, your envy turns into bitterness, and you become convinced that the spoon is the only way to ever dig. And the world passes you by."
For those like Mrs. McKeever and Mayor Dawe they can't see anything wrong because they seem convinced the only way to dig is deeper. Deeper in debt.
And after all they have the tools for the job, why don't us horrible antis?
