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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (597044)	1/20/2011 4:18:09 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573215

All the trucks and snow removal equipment If your only covering say a three year storm, rather than a 6 year one then (on the average) you get clobbered every three years. The cost to the city of being buried under snow every 6 years for a longer than normal period of time is probably larger than the incremental cost to cover the extra snow removal equipment. Yes, but when buried, the city does not pick up the whole cost........private businesses share in that cost as well. However, if the city buys the extra equipment, then only the city carries the load. Note I'm not directly passing judgment on NYC here, I'm not saying anything about how adequate or inadequate its response was. I'm making a more general point about being able to cover 6 year snow storms or other problems. Once every six years is a pretty common event. Not when you are doing a budget. Its considered an extraordinary item. all the sand and salt Pretty cheap in comparison to the other costs, it doesn't need much maintenance, it just sits there, if you stockpile more than you need, you just use it up later. Most cities are under very tight budgets these days. Even nominal extra costs are a burden. .all the personnel needed to run that equipment That should be handled in a more flexible way, contracting out, OT, etc. Perhaps union rules, or political influence, or just the habbits of the managers or their politician bosses, keep this from happening, but if so that's poorly managing the resources. It wouldn't be a big problem for the private sector but it is for cities. They just don't have the flexibility with staffing and that creates a budgeting problem.