And for another perfect example of why teachers unions is antithetical to the welfare of the kids AND the budget of the state, we have a union that has forced the State of New York to spend $81 million dollars to pay teachers NOT to teach!

The New York Times article being quoted says “The New Teacher Project, which estimates that the city has been paying $81 million over two years in salaries and benefits for teachers who have not been able to find permanent jobs.

Under the new free-market system, teachers who lose their jobs because of budget cuts, program curtailments or school closings are supposed to go into a reserve pool for a short time before they are hired elsewhere in the system. An overwhelming majority of more than 2,700 teachers sent into the pool in 2006 did just that.”

Read the full scoop here.

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