On Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:12:39 -0600, dpb wrote:

krw wrote:
...

Unless the developer is going to pay for rebuilding the roads as they
were, certainly.

Again, that demonstrates the difference between government entities and
business and the fallacy that one can truly operate a government as a
business. It makes a good ideal and one tries to be as frugal as
possible, but in the end the purpose of the government is to serve its
constituency and business is a major constituency.

It's only a fallacy because governments refuse to operate like
businesses. They certainly can, though it's not likely because they
make the rules for businesses and are under no obligation to follow
the same rules.

Throw such roadblocks in the path of development and industry and see
how long it takes to ride _that_ rail out of town... (One end, of
course, being carried by the same fella' as is also on the rail for the
"inexcusable" waste of resources).

Crap. The roadblocks in front of business are far more stringent. If
businesses do what governments do regularly, they owners would be
thrown in jail.

Again, it's easy to say "shudda'" from the sidelines and in some few
cases can be justified even. All in all, there's much in reality that
tempers that that the folks are doing the best they can w/ what they
have in resources and information available at the time.
I'm sure there are justifications. Poor planning is not one of them.
No, but there are some areas over which one may not have complete control.

Ok, floods, broken mains, earthquakes, sure.

No, I'm talking of other budgetary and legislative organizations and
mandates and on and on and on all of which are players and many of which
are out of the control of local legislative bodies--at that level they
are little more than peons trying to keep up w/
EPA/DOT/rest_of_alphabet_soup in DC as well as the same counterparts in
their own state capitol all the while trying to advance whichever
project it is over the other casts of thousands seeking to do the same
for _their_ communities...

That attitude among politicians is exactly why everything costs
double, and more. Government loves graft.

I would suggest that these two entities get together and PLAN. This
stuff shouldn't be done in a vacuum!

Well, that's the problem--the two entities themselves are likely
reporting to separate bosses and simply fulfilling _their_ mandates.
And, if it were only two that would be a reduction of a sizable number
in all likelihood...

Perhaps they are doing exactly what their boss wants. The "boss" is
incompetent, lazy, a crook, or all of the above. ...likely the
latter.

If it all were being done at a city or county (or often even at the
State) level, this coordination could be feasible to some degree. The
problem is that even such local items as a street repair is tied into
the funding cycles and planning for everything else in the entire
jurisdiction and monies virtually always have strings. Much of the time
the web to get even a small task funded is impacted by the big budget
projects because it takes getting them in place to make the dispensable
local budgets available. Then, of course, one throws in the vagaries of
bond issues and other voter initiatives that can cause changes in course
in midstream...

Come on! COordination is possible even with a business thrown in the
middle of all three. There is no incentive for government(s) *or*
their employees to be efficient.

Trust me, it's much easier to say "shudda" than it is to always avoid
what appears to be silly...and g(o)a(head)a(nd)amhikt


Of course it's easier to MMQ, but there is a reason they're called
"PLANNING Comissions".

No idea what "mmq"

Monday Morning Quarterback

is but the planning commissions in general set policy
and goals, not specific projects. It's finding the funding for those
projects that generally creates the issues because, as noted, DOT (say)
funds the surface road but it'll take a grant from somewhere else to do
the sanitary system. Those two aren't in synch and likely never will be
and there's precious little local governments can do to make it so.

They can wait or not do. In any case they *aren't* required to waste
money.

Sad, perhaps, but true...

We all know it's true. What sad is anyone defending the practice.

Again, not that it wouldn't be great in the ideal world that all carts
follow their own horses; simply pointing out that often what appears
screwed-up locally isn't necessarily that the locals didn't know what
they were doing only that they didn't have the resources in hand to get
the ideal solution. So, given that, the choice often comes down to go
ahead as you can knowing there's a fixup having to come later or blow it
all off in hope of the ingredients all coming together again later. In
reality, the chances of the latter if have gotten a part already taken
care of are vanishingly small and the choice is generally between going
ahead and scrapping the whole project for the foreseeable future. The
latter generally also doesn't set well w/ constituents.

The "ideal" solution certainly isn't to rebuild a road then do the
sewers under it. That's simply a waste of taxpayer money and there is
*no* justification for it.