My ire at city coucil workings
The workings of my local city council has raised my ire!
We’re heading onto the end of the financial year pretty soon. That’s the time of year where we traditionally see pretty awesome sales, but the other thing you’ll notice is that there are all of a sudden far more council work projects going on. Notice how roads won’t be patched, nearly at all, for the entire year save for the two months leading up to end of the financial year? Yeah, that’s because the councils all sit on their damn budgets until they know they’re not going to need them for anything major, and then spend the entire thing right before they have to submit their damn budget reports and show that they really do need the same amount of money next year, or even maybe a bit more!
Now, if this just meant that local infrastructure was being repaired, I wouldn’t have a problem, but what this also tends to signify is that a whole bunch of trees are about to be cut down. Sounds ridiculous, but you watch, you’ll start to notice it too and then the same thing this time next year and so on. I drove to the supermarket last weekend to pick some stuff up for a nice breakfast for my SO, and as I approached the entrance to the little car park attached to my local supermarket, I noticed that five trees had already been cut down - this was fairly early in the morning - and more had been marked with that bright pink spray paint that lets the council workers know which trees to cut.
Now, I slowed down and took a real good look. There was nothing wrong with these trees. They were all well established - though not ancient - native trees with no signs in the trunk cross sections of any rot or issue which would make the trees a danger. To see these harmless, unobtrusive, nice trees cut down to serve as a means of spending surplus city budget really makes me angry. They were feeding these poor trees into a big old wood chipper, too, so no, the timer itself wasn’t to be put to any use save being poured under play equipment at play grounds and serving as mulch for city council gardens. Goodness, that makes me very angry.
