Posts Tagged ‘pork’
This story is a little more local than most of our pork reports, but it still warrants a heads up.
Maggie Thurber has discovered an amazing abuse of tax dollars in the City of Toledo. Apparently,Toledo is gearing up to spend a whopping $600,000 to open several pool locations.
As Maggie points out, the City is taking the nanny state approach by deciding the costs are not relevant when it comes to providing comfort for citizens.
Kattie Bond, director of Toledo’s department of neighborhoods, said the benefit of operating city pools outweighs the cost.
“It is important to provide recreational opportunities for citizens,” Ms. Bond said. “We live in a city where we do get hot weather, so it’s important we provide a place for kids to at least get wet and cool off.”
Maggie also tosses in some pretty convincing numbers that lead to the conclusion this $600,000 project will only serve less than 2% of the population.
Last year, the pools served 25,151 entrants. The city did not keep track of how many of those ‘entrants’ were the same individual. They also charged $1 for entry.
In 2007, there were six pools open (one was a splash pad) compared to the 12 facilities opened in 2006. Despite the increased attendance at two of the pools, overall attendance at the six facilities declined 18.5% from 30,841 to 25,151. This clearly indicates that individuals who had access to a pool in 2006 did not travel to other locations in 2007 in order to “get wet and cool off.” (I just can’t imagine how they survived!)
As these numbers are visits and not visitors, it’s hard to estimate just how important this cost is to the general public. For sake of argument, let’s estimate that individuals likely to use the pool facilities will do so five times during the season. This seems a reasonable estimate considering the number of days the pools are open.
Using this assumption, the pools had about 5,000 unique visitors. The 2006 Census data shows that there are 74,896 children (under 18 years of age) in Toledo. Even if every visitor to the pools was a child, we would be serving less than 7% of the kids in the city. If we consider total population, those estimated 5,000 unique visitors represent less than 2% of the population.
Lovely, isn’t it?
Cross posted at The Oink Report and Conservablogs.com
It’s official. My blogging has reached critical mass. OK, not really critical mass, but it’s getting pretty hefty.
You see, I don’t just write posts, I maintain and manage a plethora of blogs, group blogs, and blogging communities. Lately I’ve been spending any and all extra time cleaning up other blogging projects and preparing them for a long term plan. The following is a list of some of the blogs I am intimately involved in.
The Oink Report – The Oink Report is a blog that documents government waste, pork barrel spending, and political corruption via earmarks. I’m joined by Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com, and I look forward to seeing this blog reach its full potential.
Telecommies – A Net Regulation blog aimed at exposing the truth about net neutrality.
Left Watch – This is a blog that I am only just starting to chew into. It’s main purpose is to follow the left wing money machine and provide details about where the money comes from and what it is used for.
BlockersRus.com – Blockers “R” Us is a new blog set up to follow the people who work to limit free speech by actively blocking citizen petition efforts.
ConservaBlogs.com – CB is a community of more than 20 bloggers who are hosted on the site and crank out an enormous amount of original content. The site currently enjoys more than 4,000 visits per day and is continuing to grow.
And, of course, I blog here, The Developers Blog, and Blogivists HQ.
Needless to say, it’s a handful keeping up with it all. But I love every minute of it.
Yes… I’m addicted to blogging. 
Will this guy EVER slow down on the pork buffet?
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