City Governments blows billions of Taxpayer’s money and no one seems to care

Maybe it’s just me but has anyone else noticed that some cities’ seem larger and more difficult to than the federal government’s?  Has anyone else ever wondered why some cities spend so much money with nothing to show for it that actually betters that city or its citizens as a whole?  Maybe it’s me but before we attempt to advise another city or municipality about what they should be doing, shouldn’t we clean up our city first?  I mean that throwing stones and living in glass houses sort of thing.

The reason I bring this up is this morning, I unrolled a copy of the Rockford Register Star, our local paper and saw a headline that says Rockford to go ahead on geopolicing.  The article was about finally placing police departments in three different areas of the city instead on one general location.  It spoke about hiring a consulting firm to come in and show them how it will look, buying up homes and buildings and then halting everything because the money was too high.  Is it just me but does this bring to mind an old saying of putting the cart before the horse?  Should not all of this been done first before spending one dime of taxpayer’s money or are they under the impression that since the taxpayers are quiet and do not seem to care about watching the spending of their dollars, they don’t care or maybe they have figured out if they keep us distracted with other shiny objects, we would be too busy to notice.

If paying large amounts of money to consulting firms for all types of reasons is the norm, then why do we need to elect and pay alderman or city officials?  Why not just skip that process and hire a consulting firm to come in and give us ideas on how to run a city and save the money of electing and hiring city officials or aldermen?  Does anyone really know just how much money consulting firms have cost this city and its taxpayers over the years and why, with the invention of the internet or the fact that city officials and aldermen live in the city, do we have to have some outside firm tell us what our city may need or may look like with these projects?  Do we really elect people who do not have vision or a mind of their own who live here and could easily speak to their neighbors to see what ideas they have?  Are we really that disconnected from each other that we cannot handle a civil conversation at some forum or street corner?

If you think that there is something, your neighborhood needs but the city seems to never have the money for it or something that your city could use to make life better for its citizens but the city cannot find it in the budget, add up all the money they have paid to consults and then compare those two figures.  Probably you would find that getting what your city needed could have been done had the city officials and aldermen did a little work on their own instead of pushing their job upon that outside group.  Maybe it’s just me and I could be wrong.