Opinions?

[themanishere]

Well, they are a municipality, so they could have laid off some police, laid off some city maintenance people, laid off their 911 operators, closed city hall and had no local government...there isn't too much you can do to cut cost at the city level. The bulk of any municpality's expenses will almost always be personnel.

Think about your local government. What are their primary expenses? Road maintenance, police force, provide water/trash/sewer service, maybe have a magistrate court...that is about it. There isn't much wiggle room on the city/township level.

And if they did cut something else, how much does it help. They have an electric bill that is 10 years past due! Clearly these lights were a major expense.

It will likely have side effects though (e.g. increased costs related to addressing more crime) given the level of poverty and income there.

Also, the electricity made up less than 10% of their debt. Taking that kind of measure, with the risk of unintended consequences as aforementioned, is pretty short-sighted.

I mean, of course it's common sense to stop a service you can't pay for any more. But for government, it's not so simple, for various reasons.

[Hilfiger1975]

i think they've pretty much cut all road maintenance in my town. I can actually hear my car crying as i drive down the highway. Pothole city.

+1

[duane1969]

An extra $30 or $40 might be a drop in the bucket to some but for people out there who are living pay check to pay check and extra $30 on their light bill may be the difference between weather or not their lights stay on.

Which is the same thought process that the township/city had. When you don't have it, you don't have it.

Perhaps what the city should have done is left the lights on until the electric company turned off all power to the entire city. Then the people wouldn't have to worry about those silly stop lights or cross walk lights and they wouldn't have had to bother with flushing the toilet or having any local government at all.

I realize what you guys are saying but Option #2 wasn't an option. If the electric gets cut off then the police don't get 911 calls, the sewage treatment plant doesn't treat sewage...you can't just shut down your entire operations to keep a few hundred street lights turned on.

[duane1969]

It will likely have side effects though (e.g. increased costs related to addressing more crime) given the level of poverty and income there.

Also, the electricity made up less than 10% of their debt. Taking that kind of measure, with the risk of unintended consequences as aforementioned, is pretty short-sighted.

I mean, of course it's common sense to stop a service you can't pay for any more. But for government, it's not so simple, for various reasons.

I agree with what you are saying but something has to give. No matter what they cut someone is going to complain. Lay off some police, people complain that their streets are less safe. Lay off some road maintenance workers, people complain that the roads need better maintained. Only pick up trash every 2 weeks instead of every week, people complain that the city is causing unhealthy conditions.

That is the problem with the Fed government right now. Everybody wants to whine because the government is not fiscally responsible but as soon as you start talking about cutting funding to their favorite entitlement program they lose their mind.

[theonedru]

I would look into slowly put the lights into grids that run on small solar panels, we see these running other things everywhere, at first it would be an increased cost to install but considering the cost from that point is practically nil it would be worth it. Now where are the smart people in this thread thinking about solving issues instead of complaining about them all the time....