Nanaimo-Info-blog: Job Security Projects?

Job Security Projects?

• Nanaimo Water Treatment Has 150 Years Of Safe History
• Colliery Park Lakes Dams Have 100 Years Of Safe History
• City Hall Annex Has Nearly 100 Years Of Safe History

• Let’s Spend $80,000,000.00 On New Water Treatment
• Let’s spend $10,000,000.00 Ripping Out the Dams 
• Lets Spend Another $16,000,000.00 on New Offices

“You Can Never Be Too Cautious When Public Safety Is Involved!”

Doesn’t this beg the question: “Is this generation just paranoid, or is the bureaucracy working overtime making up projects in the interest of their own job security?”

Consider how un-busy the city works department might be if it weren’t for all these projects? Would it have been necessary to hire an engineer to do a lot of what Mr. Hickey was doing?

For the most part it seems that the common role of city managers is to put out RFP’s seeking to award fat study contracts to supposed experts to direct our experts on what to do, usually after our experts have told these experts, what they expect the study to say. City managers then develop a plan to present to council to gain approval to put out another RFP to perform either another study or to perhaps submit a price to do the work.

Note: the actual expertise most often used by city hall is issuing RFP’s and after commissioning yet another study, agreeing with the hired experts.

The most recent example was spending $120,000 to have an expert deliver a strategic plan to city hall management, a task you might expect competent managers to do just as a matter of course.