Thursday, June 11, 2009

Getting More Bang out of the Bond Package

Mesa is going to get 4 new fire stations for the cost of the 3 that were approved as part of the bond package that passed last year. Competition and the lagging economy has driven down the bids in these projects, allowing Mesa to get more than they originally planned.

This is great news, especially in East Mesa, where the stations are desperately needed, and now they will see 3 new ones while West Mesa will get a new one that serves Riverview and takes the burden off of some of the other stations. All in all, this is good news, as long as Mesa can afford to pay the firefighters to staff the additional station.

The bigger impact here is the trust that this builds with the voters. We took a chance when we approved the first property tax in nearly 50 years. Mesa needs to show the voters that they can be good stewards of the money and deliver as promised. Needless to say, over delivering will definitely do the trick.

Its understood that this can't always happen (the economy will recover eventually), and the city shouldn't start to foster a culture of promising less just so they can overproduce. Now that they are going to deliver 3 for the price of 4, the next step is to make sure that these projects come in on budget and on time. We appreciate getting more with less, but we don't want to be promised that and then end up getting more because end up having to pay more.

2 comments:

Heath Reed said...

Pay will be an issue, but this is good timing and a good move by the city. In the past with many governments, they would have overpaid and wasted tax dollars on projects. Its good to see this happening, but the burden of more salary and cost due to more stations in how the city pays for it is yet to be seen.

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