Only the big dollars spent get attention. This is when we tend to complain the most. I complain when I see small dollars spent over and over again. Jobs are not done right the first time around anymore. We seem to accept that, but not me.
Let’s run through a few examples of how little things we may not pay attention to can add up to big dollars. Please note these are examples and have nothing to do with charitable donations or service money-making.
- People ask for donations. $1 a day for a month sounds good and affordable; however, it is not when it is really $30/month.
- At the store, at the register, a clerk asks you to donate a dollar. Sounds good and affordable again, but with 500 customers a day, a store can collect $500 in donations per day.
- Let’s say it’s a small cost if you buy a coffee for $1.50 every day for 250 days. Sounds affordable daily, but if you balance your books by the end of the year, you drank $375 worth of coffee only.
- A telephone company called me and offered me free long distance. I asked, absolutely free? Yes, they told me. I received my next bill, I got charged $1.25 per month. I called back and asked them to explain that charge. It’s a network charge, everyone pays that. Not me, please cancel my long distance, I asked. If they sold this concept to 1,000,000 customers, then it’s $1,250,000 per month in their pocket – for what?
Examples are endless of how deceiving and effective that small charge can be, but not so deceiving when you do your math.
Now let me give you a couple of examples from our Town.
If you drove on the St. John’s Sideroad on May 10th, 2011, you probably noticed sod being replaced on the Atkinson Park Wetland side and McKenzie Marsh side. Or maybe you didn’t notice at all. There was substantial damage done by the snow plow on both sides. Now, let’s backtrack to October 2010. Fresh sod was replaced, just in time for winter. Probably not enough time to root before the snow plow destroyed it. I didn’t even need a crystal ball to predict that replacement work would happen again in the spring. I was unlucky enough to witness it being done twice. A total waste.
I cannot tell who is responsible for that work, the town or contractors. However, wouldn’t it be easier to have it done right in the first place?
It’s funny how my photography sometimes aligns with articles in The Auroran. On Friday, I was reading “Town should keep planting options open: Downey,” an article on page 8 of The Auroran, Week of May 24, 2011. Let me quote Cllr Gaertner, “We know that trees do a lot better if the Town of Aurora plants them because they care more about them than developers.“
Now look at this photo above of the tree I took along the St. John’s Sideroad. I hope the Town of Aurora can do better than that in the future. Repetition is really costing us money, or if not us, then contractors.
Something to think about. And now I am feeling sorry for the tree…
